David Shields, Wood Type Historian (Tiny Typecast)
David Shields is my guest on the latest episode of the Tiny Typecast. He’s the preeminent expert on the history of wood type, and currently the chair of the Department of Graphic Design at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, where he teaches design. David previously taught at the University of Texas at Austin, where he was the Design Custodian of the Rob Roy Kelly American Wood Type Collection. David has engaged in extensive studies of the history of wood type production in America and Europe, as well as actively using historical type in printing. He produced the reproduction edition of American Wood Type: 1828–1900.
His work provides an invaluable tool to historian and to printers, by helping people track down the provenance of type and re-assemble sets of type that have been scattered. By educating people about historic wood type, he makes it more likely that it will continue to be cherished, retained, studied, and used. David is also always looking for the people behind the type. David’s research has helped him identify the people who worked in many wood-type companies, and even tie particular workers to fonts of type.
Read a full transcript of this podcast.
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Show notes
We discussed quite a lot in the show that benefit from direct links (and some photos):
- Rob Roy Kelly
- Philip Burton, one of my mentors
- The picture I mention of David is cropped above and at his bio at his teaching position
- Bernard Karpel, the head librarian at the Museum of Modern Art in New York
- “Nobody hangs a picture of an oil tanker on their wall.”—The Shipping News, Annie Proulx
- Dan Schneider, the industrial archaeologist who has done work at the Hamilton museum
- Pantographs: These are hard to visualize, but you can see a video of a demonstration at the Hamilton museum that I took in 2017, and this picture from the Type Archive of the DeLittle pantograph. The idea dates to ancient Greece, though it doesn’t seem to have been widely used until the 1600s. David Macmillan offers an extensive history.
- DeLittle letters and metal stamp for wood type from The Type Archive
- My 1870s letter ü from Ch. Bonnet &cie: top and mark
- The fellow who rebuilt the Hitchcock chair and furniture factory in Connecticut, John Tarrant Kenney, wrote a book about it: The Hitchcock Chair; the Story of a Connecticut Yankee.
- The Hs I had cut from the Hamilton museum were from Brylski, a typeface named for the late Norb Brylski and designed by Nick Sherman, and cut by Norb’s daughter, Georgann Liesch, Bill Peters, and David Carpenter.
- David Shields new book will be out in January 2021, but it’s not yet available for pre-order. I’ll post an update and mention on the podcast when the book can be ordered.
- Tracy Hahn created the Silver Buckle Press, the collection of which is now at the Hamilton museum
- Stephen O. Saxe, a printer, collector, and historian, who passed away in 2019